#love — Mindful Blog posts — be mindful

Climate change can be overwhelming. While looking for practical ways to help our planet, I listened into a dharma talk with Jack Kornfield on climate change that focused on our connection with nature and how we can make a difference with compassion and love.

Looking to learn more about the causes and responses to climate change? Project Drawdown is a nonprofit organization that works to identify the top 100 solutions to reversing global warming. Drawdown.org has 100 ideas in use now that could lead to the drawdown point (when levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and then steadily decline, ultimately reverse global warming).

We all know that eating a plant based diet and using electric transport will help with climate change, but some of the other things on the list may surprise you.

Here are the top 10 -

1. Refrigerant Management

2. Wind Turbines, onshore

3. Reduction of Food Waste

4. Plant-Rich Diet

5. Tropical Forests

6. Educating Girls

7. Family Planning

8. Solar Farms

9. Silvopasture Livestock

10. Rooftop Solar

There is so much work we can do to help reverse global warming. The creators of Project Drawdown, have calculated that about 1/8 of human-caused atmospheric carbon emissions are due to agriculture, food preparation, consumption and waste. The good news is that this is a great place for you to make changes in your daily life that can have a real impact. This summer, buy food from your local farmers market and CSA share pick ups and of course, bring your Reusable Produce Bags to the market.

Be sure to share with us here at Be Mindful what you are doing to make a difference in your community.

I was driving in the car with my two children. Out of nowhere my son asked, “Mom, what’s the strongest emotion?” It took me a minute to process the question and I asked, “Do you mean emotions like joy, fear, anger, happiness…” And as I was speaking my daughter interrupted with “it’s love, it has to be love.”

From a child’s perspective, the answer is clear. In light of recent national and global events, there is so much hatred and fear in the world right now that I’m not sure how we can get back to love. Maybe the key is to approach life with the eyes of a child.

Music, poetry, mindfulness, and mediation can play an important role in focusing on love. Study after study has shown that people can change. Hearts can open, and love can conquer hate. Mindfulness and meditation play an important role in building the capacity to see and respond to suffering.

Here is a six step process from Everyday Mindfulness for mindfully dealing with difficult emotions that I have found helpful and we can learn to turn our difficult emotions into our greatest teachers.